Re: Genghis Khan

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

what next, the "Management Secrets of Genghis Khan"?
;-)
 
Frankly, being able to learn more about the Mongols is one of the big advantages of pen-l. In school I mostly learned the Europrop about them, though I knew it was wrong, given the obvious hype about "Western civilization." 
 
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine 

________________________________

From: PEN-L list on behalf of Yoshie Furuhashi
Sent: Mon 1/3/2005 1:02 AM
To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Genghis Khan



>Daniel Davies wrote:
>>
>>  Well yes and the British helped to abolish suttee, but the fact remains that
>>  both we Brits (metaphorically) and the Mongols (non-metaphorically) left
>>  pyramids of skulls wherever we went.  I mean, for heaven's sake, I'm open to
>>  most arguments but everyone has their limits and apologia for Genghis Khan
>>  is apparently mine.
>>
>>  dd
>
>You should probably look into it a bit deeper. Genghis was a bit
>less bloody -- a lot less _gratuitously bloody -- than you seem to
>be aware of (or that I was aware of). Here's some more from the same
>source. I was particularly impressed by the non-use of torture by
>the Mongols. That can be said, even roughly, of no other empire that
>I am acquainted with.
>
>Carrol

George W. Bush has often been compared to Genghis Khan, but that's
greatly unfair to the latter!

Jack Weatherford, an anthropologist at Macalester College
<http://www2.macalester.edu/facultypubs/publist.cfm?FacultyID=123>,
wrote in _Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World_:

<blockquote>The Mongols made no technological breakthroughs, founded
no new religions, wrote few books or dramas, and gave the world no
new crops or methods of agriculture.  Their own craftsmen could not
weave cloth, cast pottery, painted no pictures, and built no
buildings.  Yet, as their army conquered culture after culture, they
collected and passed all of these skills from one civilization to the
next....